The older Sintashta culture (2100–1800), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately, but regarded as its predecessor, and accepted as part of the wider Andronovo horizon.

Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic-speaking area at its northern fringe.[2]

The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains,[5] overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture.[6] Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Koppet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga.[5] In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd. Mallory notes that the Tazabagyab culture south of Andronovo could be an offshoot of the former (or Srubna), alternatively the result of an amalgamation of steppe cultures and the Central Asian oasis cultures (Bishkek culture and Vaksh culture).[1]

In the initial Sintastha-Petrovka phase, the Andronovo culture is limited to the northern and western steppes in the southern Urals-Kazakhstan.[1] Towards the middle of the 2nd millennium in the Alakul Phase (2100-1400 BC), the Fedorovo Phase (1400-1200) and the final Alekseyevka Phase (1400-1000), the Andronovo cultures begin to move intensively eastwards, expanding as far east as the Upper Yenisei in the Altai Mountains, succeeding the non-Indo-European Okunev culture.[1]

The Andronovo culture consisted of both communities that were largely mobile as well as those settled in small villages.[1] Settlements are especially pronounced in its Central Asian parts.[1] Fortifications include ditches, earthen banks as well as timber palisades, of which an estimated twenty have been discovered.[1] Andronovo villages typically contain around two to twenty houses, but settlements containing as much as a hundred houses have been discovered.[1] Andronovo houses were generally constructed from pine, cedar, or birch, and were usually aligned overlooking the banks of rivers.[1] Larger homes range in the size from 80 to 300 sqm, and probably belonged to extended families, a typical feature among early Indo-Iranians.[1]

Andronovo livestock included cattle, horses, sheep, goats and camels.[5] The domestic pig is notably absent, which is typical of a mobile economy. The percentage of cattle among Andronovo remains are significantly higher than among their western Srubna neighbors.[1] The horse was represented on Andronovo sites and was used for both riding and traction.[1] Agriculture also played an important role in the Andronovo economy.[7] The Andronovo culture is notable for regional advances in metallurgy.[5] They mined deposits of copper ore in the Altai Mountains from around the 14th century BC.[8]Bronze objects were numerous, and workshops existed for working copper.[8]

The Andronovo dead were buried in timber or stone chambers under both round and rectangular kurgans (tumuli).[1] Burials were accompanied by livestock, wheeled vehicles, cheek-pieces for horses, and weapons, ceramics and ornaments.[1] Among the most notable remains are the burials of chariots, dating from around 2,000 BC and possibly earlier.[1] The chariots are found with paired horse-teams, and the ritual burial of the horse in a "head and hooves" cult has also been found.[1]

The Andronovo culture is associated by a large section of scholars with the Indo-Iranians (Aryans) and is often credited with the invention of the spoke-wheeled chariot around 2000 BCE.[1][9][10] The association between the Andronovo culture and the Indo-Iranians is corroborated by the distribution of Iranian place names across the Andronovo horizon and by the historical evidence of dominance by various Iranian peoples, including Saka (Scythians), Sarmatians and Alans, throughout the Andronovo horizon during the 1st millennium BC.[1]

The Sintashta on the upper Ural River, noted for its chariot burials and kurgans containing horse burials, is considered the type site of the Sintashta culture, and it is conjectured that the language spoken was still in the Proto-Indo-Iranian stage.[11]

Comparasions between the archaeological evidence of the Andronovo and texual evidence of Indo-Iranians (Vedas and Avesta) are frequently made to support the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo.[1] The modern explanations for the Indo-Iranianization of Greater Iran and the Indian subcontinent rely heavily on the suppositon that the Andronovo expanded southwards into Central Asia or at least achieved linguistic dominance across the Bronze Age urban centers of the region, such as the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex.[1] While the earliest phases of the Andronovo culture are regarded as co-ordinate with the late period of Indo-Iranian linguistic unity, it is likely that they in the later period constituted a branch of the Iranians.[1]

The identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian has been challenged by scholars who point to the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe south of the Oxus River.[12] Sarianidi (as cited in Bryant 2001:207) states that "direct archaeological data from Bactria and Margiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases".

Based on its use by Indo-Aryans in Mitanni and Vedic India, its prior absence in the Near East and Harappan India, and its 16th–17th century BCE attestation at the Andronovo site of Sintashta, Kuzmina (1994) argues that the chariot corroborates the identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian. Klejn (1974) and Brentjes (1981) find the Andronovo culture much too late for an Indo-Iranian identification since chariot-wielding Aryans appear in Mitanni by the 15th to 16th century BCE. However, Anthony & Vinogradov (1995) dated a chariot burial at Krivoye Lake to around 2000 BCE.[13]

Eugene Helimski has suggested that the Andronovo people spoke a separate branch of the Indo-Iranian group. He claims that borrowings in the Finno-Ugric languages support this view.[14]Vladimir Napolskikh has proposed that borrowings in Finno-Ugric indicate that the language was specifically of the Indo-Aryan type.[15]

Since older forms of Indo-Iranian words have been taken over in Uralic and Proto-Yeniseian, occupation by some other languages (also lost ones) cannot be ruled out altogether, at least for part of the Andronovo area: i. e., Uralic and Yeniseian.[16]

The Andronovo have been described by archaeologists as exhibiting pronounced Europoid features.[10] A 2004 study also established that, during the Bronze/Iron Age period, the majority of the population of Kazakhstan (part of the Andronovo culture during Bronze Age), was of west Eurasian origin (with mtDNA haplogroups such as U, H, HV, T, I and W), and that prior to the thirteenth to seventh century BC, all Kazakh samples belonged to European lineages.[17]

In 2009, a genetic study of ancient Siberian cultures, the Andronovo culture, the Karasuk culture, the Tagar culture and the Tashtyk culture, was published in Human Genetics.[10] Ten individuals of the Andronovo horizon in southern Siberia from 1400 BC to 1000 BC were surveyed.[10] Extractions of mtDNA from nine individuals were determined to represent two samples of haplogroup U4, one sample of Z1, one sample T1, one sample of U2e, one sample of T4, one sample of H, one sample of K2b and one sample of U5a1.[10] Extractions of Y-DNA from one individual was determined to belong to the East Asian haplogroup C3, while the other two extractions were determined to belong to R1a1, which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the early Indo-Europeans.[10] Of the individuals surveyed two were determined to be Mongoloids while seven were determined to be Europoid, with the majority being light-eyed and light-haired.[10]

^Mallory 1989 "The settlement and cemetery of Sintashta, for example, though located far to the north on the Trans-Ural steppe, provides the type of Indo-Iranian archaeological evidence that would more than delight an archaeologist seeking their remains in Iran or India."